Thomas Jefferson by Willard Sterne Randall

Author:Willard Sterne Randall [Willard Sterne Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612307510
Publisher: New Word City, LLC
Published: 2013-12-22T16:00:00+00:00

If pride of character be of worth at any time, it is when it disarms the efforts of malice.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1781

On the last day of May 1781, shortly after the Jeffersons returned to Monticello, Lord Cornwallis gave up his pursuit of Marquis de Lafayette and the retreating Continentals and unleashed his most daring leader of dragoons, Col. Banastre Tarleton, to make a raid on Charlottesville with 250 of his British Legion of cavalry, to seize Jefferson, the Virginia Council of State, and the General Assembly. Cornwall's plan might have succeeded if it hadn't been for Capt. Jack Jouett. A Virginia militia officer, Jouett had been sipping a drink in a roadside tavern at eleven o'clock at night when Tarleton's horsemen rode up. Jouett knew that Jefferson had moved the capital to Charlottesville, supposedly out of Cornwallis's reach, and he also knew where the road outside the tavern door led. While Tarleton gave men and mounts a three-hour rest, Jouett slipped out the back door and lashed his horse on a forty-mile dash over a shortcut to warn Jefferson. He barely managed to reach Charlottesville in time. As Tarleton's legionnaires rode through the night, Captain Jouett had just enough time to flog his exhausted horse up the steep, coiling driveway to Monticello by dawn. A red-coated giant, Captain Jouett scooped off his plumed hat, bowed deeply before His Excellency, and blurted out his warning.

Unfazed, Jefferson woke his wife and their houseguests, including several assemblymen. They ate breakfast and the legislators rode down to Charlottesville, as if they had all morning to wake their colleagues. Meanwhile, Jefferson went around the house indicating to the servants what silverware and other valuables to hide. A few minutes later, a neighbor named Hudson breathlessly warned Jefferson that the British had almost reached the foot of the mountain. In a wild scramble, Jefferson crowded his wife, their daughters, eight-year-old Patsy and two-year-old Polly and two maids into his fastest phaeton and sent them off to nearby Blenheim on Carter's Mountain to await him. It was the third nerve-racking flight from the enemy for Patty in as many months. As the phaeton disappeared down the mountain, Jefferson ordered his fastest horse, Caractacus brought from the blacksmith's shop to a road that led from Monticello to nearby Carter's Mountain. He calmly walked down the drive, then led his horse into the woods over a path that came out at Carter's, five miles away pausing occasionally to peer through his telescope toward Charlottesville. At first he saw nothing unusual. When he didn't see any cavalry he decided to go back to the house to gather up some of his papers, fearing the British would burn Monticello. Kneeling to focus his telescope, he unknowingly dropped his short sword. He rode on but once he realized the sword was missing he went back to look for it. He took another squint through the telescope and suddenly saw that the streets of Charlottesville were filled with men in the green-and-white uniforms of the Loyalist light infantry.

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